BOMBSHELL IN COMEY CASE: Federal Judge Slams ‘Disturbing Pattern’ of Justice Department Missteps – Raising Fears of Tainted Indictment and Potential for Dismissal
- Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick scolds Justice Department for ‘profound investigative missteps’ in handling of evidence against former FBI Director James Comey
- judge raises possibility that interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan may have botched grand jury proceeding, compromising indictment’s integrity
- Comey’s team to request access to transcripts of Halligan’s grand jury testimony, potentially revealing damning evidence of government misconduct
- judge slams Justice Department for accessing old evidence without new court-approved search warrant, calling it a ‘cavalier attitude’ towards Fourth Amendment rights
In a scathing opinion released Monday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick of the Eastern District of Virginia tore into the Justice Department’s handling of evidence in the case against former FBI Director James Comey, raising fears of a tainted indictment and potential for dismissal.
“The record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding,” Judge Fitzpatrick wrote, setting the stage for Comey’s team to launch a robust challenge to the indictment.
At the heart of the controversy is the Justice Department’s use of evidence collected in a prior investigation into Comey’s friend and former lawyer, Daniel Richman. The judge found that the department accessed the evidence without obtaining a new court-approved search warrant, and failed to sift out confidential attorney-client communications before charging Comey.
“This cavalier attitude towards a basic tenet of the Fourth Amendment and multiple court orders left the government unchecked to rummage through all of the information seized” from the prior investigation, Judge Fitzpatrick wrote, “and apparently, in the government’s eyes, to do so again anytime they chose.”
The judge’s opinion also revealed that an FBI agent had warned others about the potential misuse of Richman’s data on the same day Comey was indicted in September, but the agent still testified to the grand jury undeterred. Furthermore, Judge Fitzpatrick slammed statements made by interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan to the grand jury, saying she appeared to have made a “fundamental and highly prejudicial misstatement of the law” regarding Comey’s ability to testify at his own trial.
Comey’s team will now request access to transcripts of Halligan’s grand jury testimony, potentially revealing damning evidence of government misconduct. The judge’s ruling also raises significant questions about the timing of the grand jury deliberations and the completeness of the transcript and audio recording provided to the court.
“If the prosecutor is mistaken about the time she received notification of the grand jury’s vote on the original indictment, and this procedure did take place, then the transcript and audio recording provided to the Court are incomplete,” Judge Fitzpatrick wrote. “If this procedure did not take place, then the Court is in uncharted legal territory in that the indictment returned in open court was not the same charging document presented to and deliberated upon by the grand jury.”
The case against Comey, alleging he lied to Congress in 2020 about his interactions with Richman, is currently set to go to trial just after New Year’s Day. A separate judge is weighing whether Halligan has the authority to have secured the indictment against Comey, given that she is not a Senate-confirmed political appointee.